by Laura London
“Cat?” he called.
Cat pushed open the door with the heel of his hand, walked in, and froze like a pillar, the skin stretching tight over his sharp cheekbones.
“I beg your pardon,” Devon said. “Your wench is attacking me.”
Not making any attempt to repudiate his ownership of Merry, Cat replied, none too warmly, “You wanted an audience?”
“No. I want you to pry her off me. I don’t think she knows what’s happening.” Finally, impatiently, “Take her, will you? Or you can rest assured that I will.”
Chapter 13
Under the hazy sunlight of an overcast heaven Merry stood in Morgan’s spacious cabin the next afternoon watching Raven sitting in the open doorway rubbing sun-proofing ointment into Dennis the pig.
“It’s nice for me to realize,” she said cheerfully, “how much Cat thinks of me. Do you know that Cat uses what must be the same—yes, I’m sure it’s the same cream on my face. Can pigs really sunburn?”
“Ah, well, sure they can, bless their small horny trotters. On land they’ve mud to protect them.” He finished, wiped his fingers, and stood up, glancing toward the door as though he were about to leave.
“Well, that’ll do it for the time being, unless,” he said, grinning, “you need some stroked into your back too?”
“No, thank you. Besides, it’s too cloudy for ointment.”
“Days like this are the worst. Reflection or something, y’know. Saunders could explain it to you.” Turning to look at her, lifting one shapely black eyebrow, he said, “You’re solemn, lovey.”
Merry couldn’t help the faint color that began to stain her cheeks. Since yesterday in the afternoon, when Cat wrapped her in his own shirt and removed her bodily from Devon’s arms, she had not seen Devon. Where had he slept last night? From certain tentatively tactful glances she had received from Raven, it was obvious that he knew, and why it should be just as embarrassing for her when Devon was known not to sleep with her as when he was known to sleep with her was a vexing question that she didn’t bother to unravel. Possibly it was because she had the strong idea that Raven thought she and Devon had been fighting, and since the opposite of that was true…
Yesterday had shown Devon to her in a startling new light. She had spent the night trying to reconstruct the shattered picture of his character and to search through the debris for some kind of familiar consistency.
Not moving, she said to Raven, “Could you stay for a moment or two?”
“Surely, milady,” he said gently. He waited for her to speak, and when she did not, he went to the table, sat in one of the heavily ornate chairs, and pulling the card deck from his pocket, began to play solitaire. He was concentrating discreetly on the game before Merry said, “I’ve been told often enough not to ask too many questions about Devon, but… Raven, do you think you might give me a little information?”
Looking up, he said, “Lovey, I’d give you the star belt from Orion. But information you’re better getting from Cat.”
“Cat’s a clam.”
“Ah. And Devon?”
“I can’t ask him questions. I don’t know him well enough to know what would be safe to ask. Raven, I’ve got to know more about him, or my life’s going to evaporate. Does it look to you as though I’m in trouble?”
“Yes,” he said seriously, not removing his gaze from hers.
“It’s worse than you think. Much worse. Raven, please—who is Devon? Why can he come and go as he pleases?”
Stretching his legs before him, playing another card, he thought it over carefully before he said, “Devon is Morgan’s half brother.”
Inhaling quickly in surprise, Merry put a hand behind her and lowered herself onto the window bench, barely noticing as Dennis shuffled over her bare toes and laid his damp snout on her foot. At length she said, “They don’t look anything alike.”
“It happens that way sometimes. They say my father was a Dutch Jew and blond. Devon and Morgan were both got by the same father. Of course, Devon was born in England with a silver spoon in his mouth more than fourteen years after Morgan slipped into the world with a silver cutlass in his. Born in Saint-Dominique, Morgan was, on the wrong side of the blanket. His mother was the daughter of a plantation owner. Twenty years old and had never been with a man, so they say, but she gave herself to Devon’s father like a wild thing on a forest floor and was too proud to tell him before he sailed back to England that he’d got her with child. She died when Morgan was ten, and her family cast Morgan off, because all he’d ever been was a shame to them. And the father never knew about the first son…”
Her eyes were held so open and still that the lids began to ache. She closed them slowly. “And this silver spoon of Devon’s?”
“ ’Nough of one to choke a man who didn’t know how to use it. He must be someone because every man on the Joke has a pardon from the British crown, and we carry an English letter of marque. In a way, see, we’re legal. Privateers, not pirates.”
The puzzle pieces locked with a jolt. Fine hairs began to prickle on the back of Merry’s neck, and in a voice that didn’t sound right, she said, “Devon works for the British government.”
“He works for the British government,” Raven agreed. “Mind you, when we’re in open water and Devon’s not aboard, Morgan sometimes has a lapse or two of memory. Hence the British sloop you saw us take last week.” Brushing a soft black curl from his forehead, Raven redealt his deck. “Devon, in his turn, ignores Morgan’s lapses and gets the cabin which he pays for, the right to privacy in it, and the right to be put ashore when it’s convenient, and sometimes when it ain’t convenient. He also has the right to keep a prisoner, no questions asked. I guess this time around, that’s you, lovey. I’m sorry if this ain’t good news for you, milady. You don’t look so great.”
Consciously she loosened the hands that she had tightly clasped at her stomach. “No. It’s just that—You see, last night Devon was—well, he did me an act of kindness that led me to believe that I should perhaps tell him the truth about… But that’s impossible. Quite impossible if he’s British—and a… a spy. No, don’t get up. Please. I’m all right. I’m glad you told me. You don’t know how glad. You may have saved my life. But—Raven, what would they do to you if they knew you’d told me?”
“Nothing. Nothing much, anyway. It’s not so serious as it would be if I tried to help you escape.”
“Would you do that?” she asked, with a rearranged heart rhythm.
He smiled suddenly. “Y’know, darlin’, I might. If I thought I could get away with it.”
The words had barely left him when angry footsteps rang on the stairs. Cook came into the room with Will Saunders, and in a furious undertone the younger boy snarled at Raven, “For God’s sweet sake, you poor-witted nizy. Will and I were on the deck above with Shay, and we heard every word you said like it was rung from a clapper, though Shay pretended not to catch it, bless him! What if it had been Reade with us, eh? Every stupid syllable would have gone straight to Morgan. At least sport oak”—Cook slammed the door behind him—“if you’re up to talking like a simpleton.”
Turning in his chair, Raven said, “I can’t be down here in a closed room with her. Y’know Cat wouldn’t like it. Sorry if I scared you.”
“Sorry if I scared you!” Cook mimicked and, digging his hands into the red cotton front of Raven’s shirt, dragged him violently from his seat. The chair toppled with a crack, the cards flew from the table, and Merry flew from the bench, causing Dennis to squeal indignantly. Inserting herself quickly against Raven’s chest, crying out “No!” she barely missed taking the fist Cook had aimed at Raven’s chin.
Twisting his fingers around Merry’s arms, Saunders pulled her away from Raven. “Who are you—Pocahontas?” he said tartly.
Merry slapped his hand off her arm, glaring into Saunders’s shrewd gaze. “Did I say you could grab me?”
He was out of temper with her, but even so, he felt a grin nag at his mouth.
She was getting damned saucy for such a pygmy. He remembered, seeing her like this, that she had once fired a crossbow at Devon. Killing the grin, he said, “Listen to me, Miss Merry. None of us want to see you suffer, but if you talk Raven into helping you sneak off, he’s going to wind up on the looped end of a line hanging from a yardarm. He’s going to get scragged. Hanged. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely!” Merry said. “The next time I jump into the ocean and swim for the mainland, you have my word on it that I won’t so much as ask Raven to point which way.”
“Fishes go to Glory!” Cook said. “You can barely recognize it, Will, but do you think the girl’s trying to be sarcastic?”
“Good for her! What with you jackals yipping into the room. Like to give old Dennis an apoplexy.” Raven favored Cook with a happy-go-lucky smile. “Mind, you can grab me again any time you choose. The lady here has a way of throwing herself on me that I could get used to quick.”
Cook shoved Raven’s chest. “Like a rope dancer’s pole, ain’t ya? Lead at both ends. I’ve seen veal calves with more in their brain box than you! Think again if you think they won’t hang you because you’re a favorite. This ain’t a whale boat, boy. It’s a son-of-a-bitchin’ pirate ship. Pirates. You know—p-y-r—Ah, never mind.” Turning to Merry, he said grimly, “As for you, missy—”
“Wait!” said Saunders, going quickly to the door. “There’s someone coming! All they need is to find us down here fighting, and ask why.”
Moving rapidly, Raven righted the chair and sat in it, and Cook sped into the seat beside him. Merry found herself put back onto the window bench by Saunders’s left hand as he scooped up Dennis with the other.
“Now, listen, you,” he said to her in a tense whisper. “This time we’ll keep your guilty secret, but don’t try leading Raven astray again here, or I’ll go to Devon and tell him you’ve been scheming to make sail on the sly. You’ll end your days on this ship locked up so tight you won’t be able to make your eyelashes flutter.”
Saunders had meant to frighten her. Subjecting his effect on her to a quick study, he saw that he had been too effective. She was trying to appear defiant, but her lips were drawn and beginning to lose their color. Was it the threat to her or the threat to Raven that he had made too strong? He could have as easily said the same thing more gently from the looks of it, and now there was no time to correct the damage. Later he would seek her out and explain to her with more patience why it would be foolish for her to think about escaping the Joke. Or had the worried eyes and the white lips been there when he had come into the cabin? Raven could have said something to her—Raven, who was too well-meaning and honest to understand that sometimes keeping your mouth shut would help everybody prosper. Trying to soften the effect of his lecture, Saunders smiled at Merry, but the soft expression was too inconsistent with the cruelty of his earlier words. She gave him a glance full of blue needles and stared at the floor as Devon pushed open the door and strolled into the room.
At the table Raven and Cook were trying against all nautical odds to build a card house with a verve and jubilation that couldn’t have been bettered by a work crew on the Taj Mahal. The glances they turned on Devon were blisteringly innocent, and Raven was overplaying it so badly that it was little wonder that Devon walked over to him and smilingly lifted the jagged tear Cook had just made in Raven’s shirt.
Merry tried not to cower on the window bench as Devon glanced her way, assessed her idly, and said, “Children, children… Have you been fighting?”
“Devil a bit,” Cook said. “Raven and I had words over a hand of cards. ’Twasn’t nothing. You’ve played cards with me; you know how I get when I ain’t winning. But you see how peaceable we are now. Building a—a—” He doubtfully regarded the tottering structures on the table.
“Card palace,” beamed Raven.
“The pair of them,” Saunders said, “are trying to impress little Merry with the magnificence of their erections.”
Saunders thought he detected the trace of a smile at the corner of Devon’s lips, though the arrogant blond man’s stare was not encouraging. Will Saunders was as intimidated by Devon as any other man on the Joke, but he had promised Merry that he wouldn’t give her away, so he tried again. “Care to try your luck too, then?”
“No, thank you,” Devon said. “The competition is too—”
“Stiff?” suggested Cook with wicked glee.
“Possibly, but I was going to say—too numerous. Will, Tom wants you on deck. I’m going to board the American schooner and see if I can learn anything of interest. Good-bye. And take your”—Devon skillfully readjusted Dennis’s wriggling pig body in Will Saunders’s arms—“swine with you.”
The speed with which Raven and Cook quitted the room behind Saunders laid a faint suggestion that they might include themselves in Devon’s last category. Merry was still deciding whether she was also one of the swine who ought to get out when Devon shut the door and came to stand in front of her.
“Would you care to tell me what that was about?” he asked her. “The four of you weren’t throwing around heavy furniture for no reason.”
So he had heard the chair fall. “People have no privacy on a ship,” she said. “I don’t know why anyone wants to stay on them.”
“Look at me!” he said.
It was best to convince him, if she could, that nothing of consequence had occurred. Merry tilted her chin up, willing herself to fully contact his gaze. If his tone had been demanding, his eyes held a caress. There was a fine-edged friendliness about him today that she had barely glimpsed once before, the night at the tavern when she had seen him first. The sweet novelty of it cut like tin scissors through the resistance she had spent the night building toward him, but however attractive the man was, and whatever the graces of his character, this man, this British spy, would never be for her.
Last night she had heard him whisper love words to her in long unearthly dreams, and in some empty place in her spirit she had prayed that the seeds of his inclination for her might grow into something more splendid and substantial. But daybreak is a saner time, and at dawn’s first narrow light Merry had tucked away her absurd fairy-tale hopes. Whatever the kindness of his gaze this morning, there was nothing in it so noble as love or even so ignoble as lust; it was as though he had simply decided to dispense with an unsatisfied ardor. He had made a barrier, not because it would protect either him or her, but because it was common sense. In his glowing eyes, in the sensual line of his lips, there was no sign it might be a struggle for him to deny the joyous enchantment of yesterday’s kisses and transform the gentle, playful lover into a temperate companion. Oh, no, Devon was not trembling on the heart-thrilling verge of denouncing piracy and taking up cobbling in her noble honor. It was hopeless, and she had known it even before she learned about his British military connections. Hopeless.
Drawing his thoughtful scrutiny of her to an end, Devon said, “If I had to guess—and it seems I do—I’d guess that Cook wouldn’t lay hands on Raven because Raven was trying to corrupt you, so I’ll have to assume it was the other way around. What would you try to talk Raven into that Cook didn’t like?”
When it came to guessing, there was no one better at it than Devon. Merry concentrated on showing nothing, and his regard remained steady and quizzical. She had no idea whether or not she was successful. His outstretched hand came to rest on her shoulder, his touch molding lightly to the curving surface. She felt the stroke of his fingers, and his warmth penetrated slowly through her nerve-chilled and unwilling flesh. It was a clear demonstration that he could touch her and still not take her in his arms and do more. When he spoke again, it was to say lightly, “Never mind. Just don’t do anything foolish, Merry friend. If you aren’t who you say you aren’t—and I’m beginning to believe you—you have nothing to fear from me. You see, my mind is changing. I’m checking on one piece of your story, and if the item clears you—then we’ll see.”
“What item?” she said
too rapidly.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I suspect you’ll pass.”
No, I won’t, she thought, especially if it has anything to do with certain pictures I drew of you for the American government. Could you find that out? I don’t want to be here if you do.
It cost her a fiery and humiliating blush, but she said, “About yesterday…”
Attractive creases softly bracketed his smile. “It would take a savant with a micrometer to detect my conscience, Windflower, but you activate it better than most can.”
“Why?”
“I think”—his hand left her shoulder—“it has something to do with the way you fall out of a hammock.”
His words, though friendly, were dismissive; Merry got to her feet and started to walk toward the door. She stopped halfway.
“Devon?” She turned back toward him where he stood, a dusky silhouette against the window’s lurid flare. “What American schooner?”
“You listen closely, don’t you? There’s a two-masted schooner, the Good Shepherd, lying off the lee bow. We’ve been playing cat and mouse with each other for hours now, and they’ve finally signaled that they’re ready to talk.”
“What kind of American schooner would want to talk to pirates?” she said.
“She’s a privateer, probably from Massachusetts, if Morgan’s information is correct.”
It was not safe to ask so many questions; still, surely he couldn’t wonder at her curiosity? “If that’s an American privateer, why hasn’t she tried to blow us out of the water? The bounty on the Black Joke must be—”
“In the tens of thousands.” Calmly, “Yes. The Joke went through a metamorphosis before we came within range of the Good Shepherd. The black caterpillar crystallized into a white moth. The figurehead that was a gorgon has been replaced by a genie in a turban, and the signature of the bow reads Arab, which is by no coincidence a letter-of-marque trader with a Baltimore certificate of registry, Commission number six sixty-eight.”
